Driver certification issue for ARM customers

Nvidia has a long history of getting WHQL driver stamps and years of working with Microsoft from Windows 3.11 to Windows 7 today have helped the company prepare for the future.

We are hearing from our Far East based sources that Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are facing some serious changes in getting the necessary driver certification for Windows 8 RT. The same sources are indicating that Nvidia is doing just fine and that it won’t have any trouble shipping the final drivers with Windows 8 RT.

On the other hand, Qualcomm might be late with its Windows 8 RT notebooks and might not meet the launch date with design wins. Rumor has it that Texas Instruments may not be on time either, at least not with OMAP 5. We are sure that both companies are working really hard to get the certification and launch systems together with Windows 8 RT, but the end result remains to be seen.

We expect to see many more Windows 8 RT tablets, notebooks and convertibles, especially since there's a peculiar trend forming where you get both tablets and notebooks in one device. We are sure that this can start quite some pressure on Intel based Windows 8 tablets, notebooks, Ultrabooks and lead into new price and feature wars.